Smartphone Apps Are Filled With Trackers

https://onezero.medium.com/the-app-privacy-crisis-apple-and-google-need-to-fix-now-4e3590f2fc52?sk=12d73f8b09e058d3ab8f5a4b02cf8619

by tumblen • 7 years ago

244 116 7 years ago

onezero.medium.com

tomrod• 7 years ago

And I for one am tired of it!

How much would it cost me to have a phone with all trackers turned off? (Or, perhaps, routed through a core application that requires whitelisting?)

criddell4• 7 years ago

It's not possible. Even a wired landline phone generates data that the telecom companies take advantage of.

The closest you could get would be to buy burner phones with cash.

lucb1e3• 7 years ago

You're approaching it rather theoretically. Yes, even a landline generates data and metadata, but do you feel watched when owning a landline the same way as when you see that you have like three different companies tracking you in every app or website?

maxaf• 7 years ago

Running a persistent VPN to a pihole that’s constantly updated with new trackers as they come online seems like the only viable option.

rrix2• 7 years ago

It's amazing how different my phone feels since I've set up Wireguard to a server I have set up a few milliseconds away from me and put a pihole at the end of it, too. Blocking the (web) trackers at their source, coupled with less "wake up the radio to make this network call" is really quite nice, and the in-app advert spaces don't load except for a handful of folks doing (reasonable) native advertising.

ignoramous7• 7 years ago

Are you on Android? Use Firefox with NoScript or uMatrix (also as your default webview) and setup AdGuard DNS [0] or a pi-hole. You could consider using a VPN like Orbot (free Tor-as-a-proxy) [1], PerfectPrivacyVPN (supports multiple exit IPs, multiple-hops, and server side firewall) or set one up using Algo/Streisand [2].

If you do not want to root your device:

1. Install NetGuard or No Root Firewall to view what's going on from network perspective.

2. Install ExodusPrivacy to generate a report on apps wrt sdks in use by them.

---

If you are okay to root the device:

1. Install XposedMod, and then XPrivacyLua module, and work through the options.

---

If you're okay with flashing a ROM:

1. Consider LineageOS + microG

2. If you are using Pixel, consider ChromeheadOS (edit: CopperheadOS) [3].

---

If you're okay with a new device:

1. Consider purchasing puri.sm Librem 5.

---

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18788410

[1] https://guardianproject.info/apps/orbot/

[2] https://github.com/trailofbits/algo

[3] https://copperhead.co/android/

mindslight4• 7 years ago

If you're worried about flashing your device, go spend $100 on a device off the LineageOS list of supported devices, and experiment with that instead. The odds are it'll go fine and you'll be happily using it three months from now.

prophesi2• 7 years ago

Do you have a link to ChromeheadOS? I somehow can't find it via startpage or google.

Skunkleton2• 7 years ago

For anyone considering the above, this is a failing battle. The only way to stop this sort of tracking is if we have a cultural shift, start putting laws in place, and actually enforce them.

For example, did you know that many shopping malls track you with license plate readers? Did you know that your credit card transactions are up for sale? Or that your cell phone provider will give up your location to a third party with a flimsy consent?

OrgNet• 7 years ago

If you do not want to root your device:

I want to but I can't even if I "own" it.

1. Consider LineageOS + microG

Probably should avoid microG if you care about privacy...

izacus• 7 years ago

It'll cost you all your apps - it's the APP DEVELOPERS who are putting those trackers in and you'll need to give the apps up to get rid of them.

AznHisoka• 7 years ago

Apple seems to giving the appearance they are doing something about it. They claim they will remove apps that sell your location data. However Foursquare is still in the App Store, so we can’t take their claims seriously yet.

stordoff• 7 years ago

Or we'll pivot back to a paid model, or ads without / with less tracking - I don't think that's a bad trade.

Balgair• 7 years ago

SilentPhone, formerly BlackPhone, does a decent job: https://www.silentcircle.com/products-and-solutions/silent-p...

driverdan• 7 years ago

Rooted Android + AdAway = problem mostly solved.

Never buy a phone you don't have root access to.

nrjames• 7 years ago

There’s a lot of scaremongering in here. I fully support giving users full privacy controls. However, both Android and iOS allow you to toggle off availability of your Advertising ID. That’s been in there for years. Turn it off and apps can’t grab it (they get 000000000). Each vendor gets a vendor-specific ID on iOS, shared between that vendor’s apps. Delete all vendor apps and it resets.

I’m not saying this is an ideal situation by any means. However, it’s just two small examples that are ignored by this article.

kennywinker• 7 years ago

That does not help if you’ve identified yourself to the app. E.g. if you logged in via facebook, then any in app trackers can link your activity to your facebook account.

mthoms• 7 years ago

I recently installed a dating App that required authentication via Facebook or SMS. I chose SMS (because screw Facebook). But lo and behold, it turns out the App developer uses Facebook's SDK for the SMS verification anyway. And since FB has my phone number from the two factor scam [1] it pulled, it really made no difference.

Not cool.

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2019/03/03/facebook-phone-number-look...

everdrive3• 7 years ago

There's much more to tracking than your phone's tracking/Advertising ID. A modern smartphone app can identify you and commit pervasive tracking whether or not this ID is set. Disallowing permissions partially solves this problem, except that an app can get quite far just by setting its own UUIDs and sharing them with other vendors.

Further, an Android phone with no 3rd party apps is already sending an enormous amount of tracking data to Google, where it can be purchased by 3rd parties. None of this requires an Advertising ID.

tokyodude2• 7 years ago

Can you point me to where I can by this data Google is collecting? I'd like to see what data is available.

detaro• 7 years ago

Why do you assume the Advertising ID is the only tracking signal used?

kevsim• 7 years ago

What other signals are available on iOS across applications provided that you don’t do something that invites tracking (like logging in with FB, etc)?

archimag0• 7 years ago

So it actually turns out that on Android if you opt out of ads personalisation, the app still sends the advertising ID, but also sends in the JSON "advertising_tracking_enabled: false", which is not so reassuring. See Privacy International's talk here: https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-9941-how_facebook_tracks_you_on_...

AngryData2• 7 years ago

And yet IM the crazy one for still using a flip phone!

Godel_unicode• 7 years ago

Yes. You are.

chillacy• 7 years ago

Do you also not use a “rewards membership” card at grocery stores where you get charged extra to not be tracked?

RandomBacon• 7 years ago

Correct. I opt out of membership savings and credit card rewards by using cash and not using membership cards or giving out phone numbers.

(not the grandparent, but that user is not alone)

AngryData2• 7 years ago

People actually use those? I use cash for 95%+ of my purchases, the exception is ordering it direct from China.

mindslight4• 7 years ago

I'm moving towards simply having more devices, partitioning their uses. A decent tablet is a mere $50 (eg flo) and a good phone is a mere $100 (eg herolte).

It's easy enough to have eg two phones - a main one with FDroid only, and a secondary off-most-of-the-time one with YALP store convenience apps. Tablets you can diversify even harder because you don't have to carry them in your pocket.

cptwunderlich• 7 years ago

So what? They can still track you across devices. Especially if they use some 3rd party ad SDK, which might use the Google advertising ID, or some other identifiers.

criddell4• 7 years ago

If you use them to connect to your home wifi then they show up on the internet with the same IP. It's very easy to connect separate devices to a single user.

mindslight4• 7 years ago

Modern tracking is fundamentally a product of executing hostile code on your own device. The idea is to never put apps that have built in or will otherwise facilitate surveillance on the more secure devices. This includes a javascript browser, due to its unwieldy attack surface.

Separate devices draw a line in the sand, rather than just accepting amorphous insecurity as inevitable. And then you can work on slowly moving your usage patterns away from the surveillance-foregone devices.

clubm8• 7 years ago

I've moved more and more browsing to Tor. I have this HN account, a Reddit account, plus a few others. It's possible to do a large chunk of my browsing in Tor, though it's slow and sometimes pages render oddly without Javascript, so it's a bit annoying. But I like the feeling of not being tracked.

ShorsHammer• 7 years ago

Tor Browser for Android is currently in Alpha.

It's quite refreshing and works well, out of the box it runs js though unless you turn it off, a neat little reminder to use simpler sites and not support the popup/overlay hell that is the current web.

askafriend• 7 years ago

Ok...let me try.

“Physical retail stores and loyalty programs have trackers you know nothing about.”

Am I doing this right?

I feel like a deeper point needs to be made to justify these headlines. The conversation needs to evolve and get more nuanced.

smudgymcscmudge• 7 years ago

Walmart greeters have built-in facial recognition abilities. I didn’t believe this until one started greeting me by name after a few interactions.

Doubl• 7 years ago

That's one way to get rid of your introvert customers

Jerry2• 7 years ago

Is there a way to check what trackers/libraries/"kits" an iOS app uses? I don't use many apps on my iPhone and most of them don't have background & location rights so I'm not that worried but would still like to know what they send back...

layoutIfNeeded• 7 years ago

You can try MITM-ing via Wireshark or Charlesproxy but it won’t let you look into the packets if they’re using certificate pinning.

willstrafach5• 7 years ago

A surprising number of trackers do not use pinning, so this has a pretty high success rate actually.

lucb1e3• 7 years ago

Exodus can detect a number of them: https://exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/

By installing their app, you can see the trackers for each app that you have installed. If you use Yalp store (an open source front-end for the Play Store), there is also a button to view trackers for each app.

Edit: just saw that you're on iOS. This is probably not allowed by Apple, so I guess there will be no alternative.

willstrafach5• 7 years ago

Working on this. It is very tricky to do for iOS in an App Store compliant manner, but doable. Apple has already approved it.

saagarjha2• 7 years ago

You can grab the app’s IPA file with Apple Configurator and then crack it open to get a list. The binaries themselves will be encrypted, so you will not be able to introspect those, but you will get a good idea of which framework the app is using.

willstrafach5• 7 years ago

Keep in mind, only applies to externally bundled SDKs.

Some of them are designed to be compiled into the (encrypted) main app binary.

xfitm3• 7 years ago

Smartphone baseband blobs are also something we know nothing (or very little) about.

nyolfen2• 7 years ago

on ios, if you have a pihole set up, you can use dnscloak[1] to block advertising and tracking servers. (alternatively you can use one of the servers listed in the app by default if you care to trust someone else's dns server.)

you can set it to 'connect on demand', ie always on mode, at the cost of a bit of battery (not enough for me to be bothered). it acts as a vpn but only for your dns queries. afaik this is the best single step privacy option on ios at the moment.

[1] https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dnscloak-secure-dns-client/i...

kmlx2• 7 years ago

pihole? you have got to be kidding. i’d trust basically anything else than a dns box.

nyolfen2• 7 years ago

okay

snazz• 7 years ago

If you don’t trust the Pi-hole developers themselves, it isn’t too hard to build an equivalent setup with dnsmasq and your own configuration. Pi-hole does prioritize convenience over security in a number of ways so this isn’t an unreasonable choice.

revvx• 7 years ago

Why?

bobbydreamer• 7 years ago

May be that's why politicians use Nokia 3300

h1rschnas3• 7 years ago

That's one of the reasons I use AdGuard on my android phone. No problems with ads and trackers anymore.

saagarjha2• 7 years ago

Most people use the Google Chrome browser anyway

Nope. Safari is by far the most popular browser on iOS.

dontbenebby• 7 years ago

I know Algo vpn[1] can be configured to block ads with a DNS resolver, but does anyone know it also block trackers?

On desktop I use extensions to limit tracking, but it's harder on iOS.

[1] https://github.com/trailofbits/algo

novaRom• 7 years ago

When someone asks me about what is the most important challenge of this century, I reply: PRIVACY. The way it goes right now shows us very clear sign there will be no privacy anymore. Anything you say or watch is preserved and can be used one day against you. My apologies to all future politicians. It is serious. Porn habits? No problem. Drunk jokes? Will reflect. The way to solve this conundrum is a change of social norms, but it's a long way.

wavepruner• 7 years ago

There's a show on Netflix called 'Easy' that has an episode about how the solution to this is changing cultural norms. Specifically, the recognition that we all make these mistakes and will inevitably start forgiving each other. Season 1 Episode 5. Great episode.

But yea, it's going to take a long time. And it's going to be a crazy ride.

ndnxhs3• 7 years ago

Privacy is very important but its just a drop in the ocean compared to environmental disaster. Google tracking you browse the internet seems unimportant compared extinction.

Nextgrid2• 7 years ago

This raises a question, how much does the cancer that is advertising & analytics consumes in terms of electricity and engineering time that could've been put to better use?

tspike• 7 years ago

Advertising is fueling that extinction; why else would we consume so much, in such a wasteful way?

jerf• 7 years ago

I don't think porn habits or old photos are the primary problem. The primary privacy problem of the 21st century is a powerful group of people, be it government, Big $X, or even just a mob discovering you have Wrong Beliefs, even if you didn't put those beliefs out expecting them to go public, or even if they were expressed in your own home.

Compared to the budding nightmare I see coming from that direction, merely losing your nudes, while a more acute problem, will have nothing on the chronic changes that's going to bring.

Drdrdrq• 7 years ago

This. Privacy is not about embarrasment. It's about power.

I don't care (that much) about my privacy, I care about everyone's privacy.

Pmop• 7 years ago

One of these days, I took some time to analyze network traffic going out of my phone. I wanted to know what was happening behind. I learned that some apps that I wouldn't think of, such as banking, ISP and credit card, were tracking me and sending information to advertising companies!

I got angry at some things. For instance, ISP app should provide me information about data consumption and means to buy more. However, it decided to do more things behind the scenes, in addition to doing the tasks it was supposed to in a overly complicated manner—requests travelled back and forth over multiple servers over multiple companies before it did anything.

After this exercise, I realized how great it would be if these companies had to provide a clean and well documented API. Users could implement their own apps, liberating themselves from having to trust their private data and resources to companies that would care less if, if allowed.

TeMPOraL3• 7 years ago

After this exercise, I realized how great it would be if these companies had to provide a clean and well documented API. Users could implement their own apps, liberating themselves from having to trust their private data and resources to companies that would care less if, if allowed.

That's why we don't have those APIs. It's not in the interest of any company to make itself more interoperable. This would allow users to develop ways at getting directly what they want and paying the sticker price, without being exposed to all kinds of garbage. Problem is, this very garbage is an important, and sometimes primary way companies make money.

Put another way: most companies aren't your friends, they're here to abuse you. Hold on tightly to the rare ones that are friendly.

jimjimjim• 7 years ago

hey everybody. buy stuff. with money.

vlozko• 7 years ago

As an app developer, what worries me if the third party tools we use do unintended tracking. For example, we use Firebase for tracking crashes and knowing which versions of our apps are being used. We’ve also recently started using them for push notification handling for Android streamlining reasons. In one of the apps I’ve worked on we need location permissions to do geofencing but it’s all local, on device stuff. On the same app we’ve also recently added support for adding/removing calendar events. Again, it’s feature we added that’s local-only and theres’s no data transmission associated with that feature. The only tracking we do is our own home-grown solution that we don’t share externally.

With all that in mind, I’m curious how much of that data does Firebase, aka Google, share with all the rest of its services. Does enabling location tracking suddenly causes Firebase to report location data without our knowledge? Does enabling calendar access suddenly cause Firebase to read the calendar data on its own and report that, too? I’m not at all accusing Firebase of doing anything without knowledge and maybe it may be a “good citizen” with regards to how it manages and accesses (or doesn’t, even if it can) private data but I’m confident that that’s not the case with every third party tracker.

willstrafach5• 7 years ago

Does enabling location tracking suddenly causes Firebase to report location data without our knowledge?
Does enabling calendar access suddenly cause Firebase to read the calendar data on its own and report that, too?

These are good questions to be thinking about. As for Firebase specifically, I have never seen it automatically collect additional data based on user-granted permissions (at least in iOS apps).

However, there may be a few other SDKs with this sort of issue. It is important for app developers to be careful of this.

For example, when working on similar location tracking research (see: https://guardianapp.com/research/ios-app-location-report-sep...), I noticed that quite a few prominent apps use an SDK from “Braze” (https://www.braze.com/), and if location permission was granted to the “host” app, the SDK automatically sends back the user’s GPS coordinates when communicating with the Braze API. I remember at least one such app developer had no idea Braze was doing that and rushed a fix out soonafter to make it stop sending the GPS information to Braze.

I hope we see more pressure on analytics companies to offer more open source SDKs instead of compiled binaries and headers. This sort of issue would be easier to spot and deal with, instead of being unsure what exactly the SDK was doing.

ChuckMcM• 7 years ago

A hundred times this. One big red flag is if you have a 'free' stack which does something useful for you. It is important to ask if it does something 'useful' for the stack developer who gave it to you to use. Perhaps the most canonical example of this was Facebook giving away "free" internet to under served groups in India. At what point will we have an organization giving away 'free phones' to people as a way of developing demographic data?

On the plus side I think more and more developers and users are becoming aware of the dangers and the actual cost to their privacy and/or brand that these 'free' things expose and so it will perhaps get better.

hendrikh• 7 years ago

You are Right, but XML should also Not be used, and what to consider as Configuration? Maven: Pom.xml as well? JSON is neat, like to use it. Write your own parser to fix Tage issues you see. But in the end: what Format do you propose for config files?

Jemm• 7 years ago

I have raised the issue of trackers in analytics SDKs on developer forums and the result has invariably been negative towards me.

When speaking to friends and coworkers about these issues, the result is mostly people calling me paranoid.

Developers mostly don't care as long as they get money.

Users mostly don't care as long as they get cheap apps.

As a developer who does not use third party SDKs that track users (other than the OS) because I value my user's privacy and realize that many of my users are in places where data is expensive and scarce, I sometimes feel like I an engaging in a futile and unwanted effort.

Buetol• 7 years ago

Since it's not yet mentionned, here's an alternative:

The Librem 5 represents the opportunity for you to take back control and protect your private information, your digital life through free and open source software, open governance, and transparency
As a social purpose company, Purism believes building the Librem 5 is just one step on the road to launching a digital rights movement, where we—the people—stand up for our digital rights, where you place the control of your data and your family’s data back where it belongs: in your own hands. Let’s declare, “We will no longer allow unfettered access to our photos, videos, email, text messages and application and usage data without our permission.”

https://puri.sm/products/librem-5/

Smartphone Apps Are Filled With Trackers

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